Iron and Blood: a Theon & Sansa Story

Chapter 4

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Theon
The bandage was fresh, he could tell. As Sansa pulled away the layers, the red spot upon the whiteness grew larger with peel of the fabric.

Theon knew he should not have pushed her further, but something drew him in—the half-remembered smile in the morning mist, Sansa's deep blue eyes sunken and afraid as she watched her brothers practice. There was a hurt beneath these bandages that did not bleed, Theon could tell, but it was hard to say whether or not Sansa was prepared to admit it.

The last layer pained Sansa the most. It made the sharp sound of an old page turning in an ancient book, damp and harsh. Sansa exhaled in relief, letting the sullied bandage fall from her hand. She moved her skirt to give Theon a better look, and when he saw he turned away.

Something grumbled inside him. He was a man of iron—he'd fought men, cut men and made them bleed. He had watched every ounce of blood drain from a foe's heart and lost more blood to those same men than he cared to admit. In considering the grisliness of those wounds, Sansa's skinned knees were mild.

Yet no wounds had ever made Theon's ribs ache so deeply. Maybe it was knowing that they pained Sansa so gravely. They were skinned raw down to the pink tissue of Sansa's leg, speckled white and yellow with what looked like an infection. The cuts were desperate for a true cleaning at the hands of a maester, but Theon knew better than to suggest it. These were not the knees of someone who prayed an hour every night. Only long nights of devotion could grieve the skin so greatly. The burgundy-colored dirt of the Godswood was unmistakable at the corners of Sansa's wounds, an indication that the Old Gods were the ones to whom she'd pled so desperately.

"These have to be cleaned," he declared, avoiding the mention of a maester.

"I have cleaned them," Sansa replied, scraping away the crusted blood that had fallen down her leg. "I pour water over them every morning, I swear it."

Theon sighed. Pouring water was not nearly enough, he knew, and Sansa's oozing scrapes were the proof of it. "Let me," he insisted. "Give me a moment's leave and I'll get some strong wine from my chamber. It will help stop any infection." He started to go but Sansa caught his arm.

"No," she commanded. "I don't have time for it. I need to go now, Theon, please." Her eyes were dark and pleading, but it would not sway him. When he was just a boy, he'd seen men at sea die of infections from wounds less severe than Sansa's. Their bodies had been fed to the ocean, leaving nothing but their soiled bedclothes, drenched in sweat, to speak for the lives they had led. By the end, they had begged Theon, only a small boy come to bring them water, to relieve them from their misery with the swift metal of death. Theon only ever left the water on a crate beside them and nodded, as if to affirm that he had heard them, before he left again.

The pain he had witnessed in those years had left him with a guilt he could not name, though he knew he would bear it anew should he let Sansa's wounds fester without speaking a word.

"I can clean them later," he promised. "I have to." He knew it was not his place to give a Stark orders, but Sansa was too polite to scold him. He shrugged away from the hand that had prevented his exit and said, "If you have to help Lady Stark now, I will wait until the others have gone to sleep. Let me help you."

Sansa bent down to retrieve the bandage from the floor, clutching the top of her dress to keep her chest covered. As she sat back again, she tied the cloth around the wound again and nodded—the way Theon had nodded to those poor sick men in the bellies of Iron ships. "I'll return once I've put Bran and Rickon to bed," she assured him. Theon hesitated, still unsure. "On my honor as a Stark," she added quietly.

It was enough for him. He moved aside to allow her passage through the great wooden door. She left him with the silent books of the reading room, where a candle on the wall was sputtering at the last of its wick. The moonlight held the room even without the fire: a silver half-moon shone through the dirty pane of glass which served as the tower's highest window.

Theon looked down at the empty yard then over the walls of Winterfell to the dying grass that lay beyond. He touched the part of his arm where Sansa had been, longing for something. Theon was quick to shake the feeling away and straighten his doublet. Soon a wench from the brothel beyond the walls would sneak to his chamber for the night, hungry for his touch.

As the candle finally died away, Theon left the reading room to find his nightly woman, so he could tell her she would not be needed in his chamber tonight.